They had pitted and proved their strength
against a wilderness; they had reclaimed the North of Ireland
from desolation. For the time, many of them were educated men;
under the regulations of the Presbyterian Church every child was
taught to read at an early age, since no person could be admitted
to the privileges of the Church who did not both understand and
approve the Presbyterian constitution and discipline. They were
brought up on the Bible and on the writings of their famous
pastors, one of whom, as early as 1650, had given utterance to
the democratic doctrine that "men are called to the
magistracy by the suffrage of the people whom they govern, and
for men to assume unto themselves power is mere tyranny and
unjust usurpation." In subscribing to this doctrine and in
resisting to the hilt all efforts of successive English kings to
interfere in the election of their pastors, the Scots of Ulster
had already declared for democracy.
It was shortly after James VI of Scotland became James I of
England and while the English were founding Jamestown that the
Scots had first occupied Ulster; but the true origin of the
Ulster Plantation lies further back, in the reign of Henry VIII,
in the days of the English Reformation. In Henry's Irish realm
the Reformation, though proclaimed by royal authority, had never
been accomplished; and Henry's more famous daughter, Elizabeth,
had conceived the plan, later to be carried out by James, of
planting colonies of Protestants in Ireland to promote loyalty in
that rebellious land.
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